#15 - How old was Ahaziah when he began to reign?

Response by Wendell Leahy

How old was Ahaziah when he began to reign, 22 or 42?

22 years old
2 Kings 8:26: Ahaziah was 22 years old when he became king; he reigned one year in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Athaliah, granddaughter of Israel's King Omri.
42 years old
2 Chronicles 22:2: Forty and two years old was Ahaziah when he began to reign, and he reigned one year in Jerusalem. His mother's name also was Athaliah the daughter of Omri.

The correct answer is: 22

The 1599 Geneva Study Bible

That is, after the death of his father.
2 Chronicles 21:20: Thirty and two years old was he when he began to reign, and he reigned in Jerusalem eight years, and departed without being desired. Howbeit they buried him in the city of David, but not in the sepulchres of the kings.

Jamieson, Fausset, Brown

Forty and two years old was Ahaziah when he began to reign (Compare 2 Kings 8:26). According to that passage, the commencement of his reign is dated in the twenty-second year of his age, and, according to this, in the forty-second year of the kingdom of his mother's family [LIGHTFOOT]. "If Ahaziah ascended the throne in the twenty-second year of his life, he must have been born in his father's nineteenth year. Hence, it may seem strange that he had older brothers; but in the East they marry early, and royal princes had, besides the wife of the first rank, usually concubines, as Jehoram had (2 Chronicles 21:17); he might, therefore, in the nineteenth year of his age, very well have several sons" [KEIL] (compare 2 Chronicles 21:20, 2 Kings 8:17).

Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

Two and twenty In the parallel passage of Chronicles, it is said, "forty and two years old was Ahaziah when he began to reign;" but this is evidently a mistake, as it makes the son two years older than his own father! For his father began to reign when he was thirty-two years old, and reigned eight years, and so died, being forty years old See 2Kings 8:17; and the Note on 2kings 8:2; 2Chronicles 22:2

Forty and two. In the parallel passage, (on which see the Note) he is said to be only twenty-two; and this is doubtless the true reading, as it is supported here by several MSS and Versions. 2 Kings 8:26

Matthew Henry Commentary

He is here said to be forty-two years old when he began to reign (v. 2), which could not be, for his father, his immediate predecessor, was but forty when he died, and it is said (2 Ki. 8:26) that he was twenty-two years old when he began to reign. Some make this forty-two to be the age of his mother Athaliah, for in the original it is, he was the son of forty-two years, that is, the son of a mother that was of that age; and justly is her age put for his, in reproach to him, because she managed him, and did what she would—she, in effect, reigned, and he had little more than the title of king.

Many good expositors are ready to allow that this, with some few more such difficulties, arise from the mistake of some transcriber, who put forty-two for twenty-two, and the copies by which the error should have been corrected might be lost. Many ancient translations read it here twenty-two. Few books are now printed without some errata, yet the authors do not therefore disown them, nor are the errors of the press imputed to the author, but the candid reader amends them by the sense, or by comparing them with some other part of the work, as we may easily do this. The history of Ahaziah’s reign is briefly summed up in two clauses, v. 3, 4

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